|
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Like the book it is named after and based on, Permanent Midnight is a chronicle of downfall. Jerry Stahl, the story goes, showed promise when doing shifts as a porn writer for Hustler and Penthouse, and his promise landed him in the exact center of television's hottest shows of the 1980s. Alas, Stahl also brought with him a gargantuan appetite for drugs, most damagingly heroin. The film begins with Stahl, played by Ben Stiller, working in a fast-food chain on his way back to society from the drug-addled skids and recovery. He's lured away from work, where in a hotel room with Maria Bello (as Kitty) he begins detailing his fall from TV's top (where he wrote for shows like Alf and Moonlighting, among others). Director David Veloz does great work in leading viewers through the episodes in addiction and excess, making the action seem naturally odd. There are priceless shots of Stahl and his coke-smoking buddy on an upper floor of a high-rise smoking and leaping into the windows--which don't break, of course. Stiller does a classy job of staying monochromatically zoomed in on scoring and shooting dope. He's sweaty and freaked out at the right times and grimy and desperate, too. The movie's a sad one, with Stahl's journey taking him through an arranged marriage (which benefited him enormously) to the couple's having a baby to getting busted on a rare occasion alone with the infant. It's a visceral script, replete with lots of intravenous drug use and Stahl/Stiller creating a recurring motif out of shooting the bloody drawback from the syringe onto the ceiling, making a mad little scribble. --Andrew Bartlett
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Interesting, slow, depressing
Based on the autobiography of Jerry Stahl who is playhed by a very subdued Ben Stiller(no humour here). The cast is rounded off by owen Wilson and Genine Gerafalo as well as Elizabeth Hurley. It is essentially a movie about a writer who goes from small town nobody to big stardom writing for Alf and other 1980s comedy shows, but his downfall comes through heroin addiction. This is mostly a chronicle of this downfall, his shakes and endless search for another hit. It is tragic but eventually the ... Read More
Rating:  - Maria Bello as Savior; Amen Brother!
This little movie, "Permanent Midnight," almost makes it. I had a four-star review going for it right until the final scene where what could have been a capstone moment, simply misses the mark. When Brad Delp, God rest his soul, former lead singer of Boston belts out in "Peace of Mind","Now everybody's got advice they just keep on givin' / Doesn't mean too much to me / Lot's of people out to make believe their livin' / Can't decide who they should be," I think he must have had a movie like "Permanent ... Read More
Rating: - Episodic but riveting
Movies rarely hold the same allure as the books from which they arise and that's the case here. "Permanent Midnight" portrays the harrowing experinece of a television script writer that was also a heroin addict.
Ben Stiller stars as Jerry Stahl, whose autobiography is the basis for the film. Stahl appears in a brief role as a physician treating his own (through Stiller) addiction. This is an interesting insofar as the physician -- the real life drug addict -- is very downbeat about Stiller's ... Read More
Rating:  - Permanent boredom!.
Ben Stiller stars in this independent drama film about a top Hollywood scriptwriter Jerry Stahl who appears to have the perfect life he has lots of cash, an attractive wife and a baby on the way but Jerry harbours a secret drug addiction and when things get realy bad he checks himself into a rehab clinic. Whilst there he meets Kitty (Maria Bello) and together they plan for the future, first of all we have all ready seen better movies about drug addiction that ruins a persons entire career and life so what ... Read More
Rating: - Requiem for a Permanent Midnight with Jesus' Son and the Drugstore Cowboys
Admittedly I'm guessing here, but it would seem that the lurid fascination of drug-themed films has diminished considerably in recent years. Or if I can only speak for myself, I guess I can say that their fascination for me has dwindled. When PERMANENT MIDNIGHT came out (to mixed reviews) in 1998, I made a mental note that, while I probably wouldn't want to pay theater prices to see the movie, I'd make a point to catch it when it came out on video.
Well, it's taken me over five years to get ... Read More
|
